In my living room, near the wall closest to the tiny front hall, there was once a large piece of furniture, wooden and black and heavy, with varying shelf space of multiple heights and widths.  The delivery men, when they were moving it in, hated it because it was immense.  It really was a challenge and they struggled mightily and I felt bad for them but only briefly because I don’t imagine anyone forced them to become movers and, according to some philosopher who was much smarter than me, if you’re living the life you choose, you can’t complain.  Anyway, for a few minutes, the unit was actually stuck in the entranceway and the movers didn’t know what to do.  It just sat at an odd angle, wedged, while they looked at each other and swore.  They soon enough figured it out though and eventually they maneuvered it according to my direction and placed it where I wanted, but they weren’t happy.  I gave them each a beer and that helped.

It took some time for me to all fill the empty spaces because I didn’t own much.  I filled a couple shelves on the left side with some hard-cover books, nice faux leather-bound editions by British writers like Dickens and Wells and Hardy, then on the right side, the Americans – Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Faulkner and Poe – and underneath, on a longer shelf, Chekhov and Turgenev and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, the Russians who I enjoyed the most and understood the least.  On other shelves, I placed a few old trophies from my sports days when I still had potential and some souvenirs from various travels.  The trophies, to be honest, looked a bit stupid and pretentious, but the travel relics were intriguing.  One was a shrunken shaman head that I purchased in Indonesia that supposedly brought good fortune, at least that’s what the man in the stall told me.  He sold t-shirts and dried animal paws and snake skin wallets too.  Over time, I filled the rest of the shelves with garage sale and second-hand store acquisitions.  When there was no more space, and I ultimately stepped back and leaned against the wall opposite and looked, the arrangement and its dauntingness pleased me.  It overwhelmed the room in a good, albeit odd, way and made my table and chair and couch look dwarfy by comparison.  I’m sure a lot of people would have thought it ridiculous, but that’s fine.

I’m going to change direction a bit now, just briefly.  It will all make sense in the end though, don’t worry.  Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I wake up with a headache and I have to splash my face with water and get a cool drink.  Juice is best, maybe because of the sugar.  Sometimes I wake up anxious too so I cover my nose and mouth with my hands and breathe deeply and only have my drink when I’ve calmed down.  And sometimes, when I wake up, I’m not even in bed.  A couple times, I’ve woken up on the floor in the hall near the front door and a couple other times I’ve been face-down on the kitchen tile or curled up in the bathroom next to the tub.  There’s no explaining it and no predicting it.  I’ve gone to a couple doctors but they just say to let them know if it gets worse.

When these events happen, and it’s dark and I’m groggy and preoccupied with trying to feel better, I don’t notice much around me.  I repeat my pattern of breathe and wash and drink and I go back to bed somewhat oblivious.  The last time though, whenever it was, my anxiety didn’t go away so, after having some juice, I think it was orange, instead of trying to resume my sleep, I switched on the lamp in the living room and dropped down onto the couch and spilled some drink on my shirt and saw that it was only four AM and that perturbed me more.  I looked to the ceiling and shrugged and looked down at the spilled splotch of juice and shrugged again and looked up at the monstrous piece of furniture across the room and it seemed to no longer be as black as before.  It seemed to be kind of light grey.  It loomed over me and I felt an irrational sense of mocking.  I got up and turned on the ceiling light and illuminated the room as much as possible and rubbed my eyes and stared at the definitely no-longer-black shelving unit that stared back.  I stayed seated on the couch in the much-too-bright light for the rest of the night, maybe dozing a bit.  I probably I slept a little but I didn’t feel very well-rested, that’s the truth.

When I felt it was time to get up, I walked to the bathroom and ran the water hot and washed my hands and face, then dried off and returned to the living room.  All the lights were still on and I was spot-lit like a performer and I looked at the shelving unit and confirmed in my mind that, yes, it had faded noticeably from black to grey and this made no sense because the books and trophies and travel souvenirs all seemed the same.  Then I laughed at myself because, whether the books and trophies and travel souvenirs were the same or not, furniture on its own should still not change colour overnight.

I went to my kitchen and poured myself a bowl of cereal and ate it over the sink with a shaking hand and spilled a bit onto my shirt and that added to the stain of juice from earlier.  It was ten o’clock.  Time was passing fast.  I had no appointments or obligations so whether time was passing fast or not, it didn’t really matter, it was just an observation.

I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking.  I got the thought that maybe I needed some assistance.

I live on the fourteenth floor of an old rental building and there are twelve individual units on my floor.  Some residents, like me, have lived here a long time, others are relatively new.  I don’t know many of them very well.  I slipped on my jeans and my shoes and unlocked my door and walked out into the corridor and began knocking.  I didn’t verbally call out to anyone, I just knocked on their door and waited and, when I didn’t get an answer, I moved on.  It didn’t cross my mind at the time, but some people, I realized later, had most likely gone to work a couple hours earlier and I was trying to get attention from an empty room.  But it was also quite possible that people looked through their peepholes and saw me and stayed silent since I hadn’t thought to comb my hair or change out of my stained shirt and I probably looked a bit unbalanced.  As an aside, I don’t work.  I haven’t really felt like it lately.

At the far end of the corridor, when I knocked on the door on the right, I heard a soft female voice say, “I’m coming,” and then ask, “Who’s there please?”  I knew this person.  She was a very kind old lady, very grandmotherly, who had lived in the building for a long time.  We bump into each other occasionally.

I said my name, I said I’m the guy from the other end of the hallway, I’m just hoping to talk to you briefly and ask you a question if you would allow me just a few moments. 

I heard the deadbolt slide and the chain of the upper lock disengage and the door opened slightly and the old lady looked at me and smiled.  “Yes, of course,” she said.  “Would you like to come in?”

I said that would be fine.  She opened the door wider and I entered and thanked her.

“Please,” she said, “sit here.”  She pointed to the couch and we both sat down.  I sat first.  Since she was old, it took her longer. 

I’m so sorry for my appearance, I said to her, it’s been a difficult night and I’m a bit out-of-sorts.

“Oh that’s fine,” she replied kindly.  “My eyesight isn’t very good anyway.  I wouldn’t have noticed.  I can only see shadows now, I’m afraid.”  She smiled when she talked.  She really was very much like a grandma.  Her hair was short and silver and curled and her face was wrinkled.  She wore a blue-and-white knee-length dress and brown nylons and clunky brown shoes and accessorized with a necklace of large white pearls and clip-on pearl earrings.

I’m sorry to hear about your sight, I said.  You may not be able to help me then.  You see, my question involves sight, and if you can’t see well, I don’t think you’ll be able to help.

“What is your question?” she asked.  It pleased me that she was still interested. 

Well, I said, I was wondering if you’ve ever had furniture that changed colour?

She made a confused face and her wrinkles deepened.  “Your furniture changed colour?”

Well, not all of it, I said, just my big shelving unit.  It was black when I bought it but overnight it faded to grey and I wondered if you’ve ever heard of anything like that before.

“I’ve never heard of that before,” she said softly.  She looked a bit more concerned now, maybe a little nervous.  I can tell when people get nervous.

Well, thank you for answering my question anyway, I said, perhaps I’ll go now.  We both stood up and she escorted me to the door but she seemed agitated and she opened the door quickly and made a motion with her arm indicating that, yes, she definitely wanted me to go.  I had made her nervous, it was obvious.

“I hope your problem sorts itself out,” she said.

Thank you for your time, I said.  I’m sorry if I disturbed you.  She shut the door and I heard both the bolt and the chain lock.

I shuffled down the corridor in the direction of my apartment.  A young woman who I had never seen before stood with, I assumed, her little daughter, and they were waiting for the elevator.  They were going down.  The blue light had been pressed for down.

Hello, I said.

The woman glanced up at my uncombed hair and then down at my juice-and-cereal stained shirt and she pulled her daughter, I assumed it was her daughter, tightly towards her and turned away from me and, when the elevator door opened, they entered quickly and I saw her press at the console buttons, almost frantic-like.  I’m pretty sure she was trying to get the door to close as fast as possible.

I walked to my apartment and entered and went immediately to check the shelving unit and now it was white.  I touched it and I knocked on its wood and I ran my hand across its front and down its sides.  It felt as it should, it felt fine.  I pulled out a book, one of the Russian ones, and then put it back, and I shifted the shrunken head from one spot to another and moved it from its place on the upper shelf to a lower shelf and then I moved it back and, even in this brief time, it seemed to me that the unit had faded again, to a lesser-white.

I sat down on the floor and crossed my legs and stared and I stared for a long time and I didn’t eat or drink and, after a few hours, it felt like a few hours anyway, I must have slumped over without realizing it because when I opened my eyes again it was dark outside and I was laying down.  I glanced nervously at the shelves and felt a new bubbling of panic because they had faded again, to even more of a lesser-white, if that makes sense, maybe approaching the very early stages of transparency.  I decided to call my landlord.  Maybe he could assist.

The phone rang several times before a very gruff voice answered.  “Yes, what, hello?”  I greeted him kindly and explained the situation.  “It’s two o’clock in the morning, why are you calling me now?” he yelled.

Well, I went on, I just hoped you might be able to help, that’s all.  You know, maybe you’ve had this experience?  With fading furniture? 

“Is this a joke?” he asked angrily.  “It’s two o’clock in the morning!”  Then he hung up.  From his perspective, I guess I could see why he would be angry, although it disappointed me that he hadn’t considered my problem, even just for a moment.  I thought that was a bit selfish.  I looked again at the shelves, then stood up and went to the kitchen for a glass of juice, then walked to my bedroom and fell face-first on top of the unmade sheets.  It had been a while since I had last washed them and they smelled a bit musty.  That was my last thought before falling asleep.

It was a restless sleep too, with a lot of dreams about running and falling, and when a loud and disturbing crash woke me, I wasn’t sure if the noise had been real or just in my head.  I checked the clock and it was almost eleven in the morning.  I had fitfully slept for a long time.  I sat up and rubbed my eyes and stretched my arms skyward briefly, then stood and, it was my first priority, almost like an obsession, walked to my living room to check on the shelving unit, to see if it was black or brown or lesser-white or maybe some other colour, but it wasn’t there at all.  It’s not like it had collapsed, it was gone completely, without a trace.  It had faded, I guess, until it was literally nothing.  I had always thought that something couldn’t turn into nothing, but maybe I was wrong.  The crash I had heard was the sound of the American books and the British books and the Russian books dropping to the floor along with the trophies and the travel souvenirs and the garage sale and second-hand store knickknacks.  Everything was in a pile with the shrunken shaman head balanced on top.

It’s been a couple weeks now and I haven’t tidied anything up yet.  The pile is still there and, to be honest, I think I’m just going to leave it.  I think it looks artistic, in an abstract sort of way.

– Chris Klassen